


Stony Toad and the Gift Giving Potter

by ace_is_ace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Harry, Fluff, Gift Giving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Office Worker!Draco, POV Draco Malfoy, Prompt Fill, cold offices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 23:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12898725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_is_ace/pseuds/ace_is_ace
Summary: Harry brings gifts to Draco. Until he doesn't. Draco has trouble with the words.Prompt #663 from drarrypromptoftheday:'Draco works a ministry job with lots of boring paperwork and every time auror Harry returns from an exciting mission he goes to Draco’s desk and leaves him a souvenir of sorts. Draco always acts uninterested (he thinks Harry is bragging) and doesn’t touch it until he’s sure nobody’s looking at him but he secretly has his desk’s bottom drawer of his desk filled with them (only to sell them later of course).'





	Stony Toad and the Gift Giving Potter

**Author's Note:**

> Aye, I know, another gift giving fic. So sue me.

The thing is, the absolute kicker when he looked back on it, is that he had really honestly believed Harry Potter that very first time he came by the records office with a stack of debriefs and a little stone toad.

The stupid nutter had come in looking nervous but once he’d seen Draco, a small smile (a smirk, he had thought) had tilted his lips. He’d dropped the stack of files on his desk with a, ‘Have fun.’ And then, a half turn, and, ‘Oh, I saw this on the mission and it reminded me of you,’ and he’d dropped a little carved stone toad on top of the files. Draco picked up the toad carefully, worried it might be a prank. There wasn’t even a trace of magic on it. When he’d looked up, the dratted auror was gone.

When he’d looked back down at the toad, it was still an intricately carved soapstone toad. Its eyes bulged mockingly at him. When he’d checked the report, it was a dry, messily scrawled, brief of an international trip to Lillehammer to help convince a parsel fluent troll to return to it’s home outside the city.

He’d chucked the toad in his ink drawer with the intent to forget about it. He had. For about two weeks, that is. Then one fine February morning, the short auror had come strolling in with another stack and something made of reeds. He dropped the whole stack on his desk with a, ‘I heard you had some fire trouble, try not to burn the place down.’ (The thing is, Draco _had_ had some fire trouble. His kettle fire kept acting up and scorching the the papers on his desk. Now Draco knew that the glitches were thanks to Finch-Fletchley’s hex on it.) On top of the reports was a crude cross, that was fashioned from reeds. He’d seen one in a book about the druidic mages of Ireland. Sure enough, Potter had been in Galway on Imbolc.

He’s hung this on the wall next to his desk, mostly out of a fear of the latent magic he could sense in it. Trust Potter to find something filled with magic long hidden from the British Ministry.

Next time Potter came around, nearly a month later, he’d been limping and looking particularly haggard. But when he’d seen the cross on Draco’s wall, he’d grinned and asked, ‘Any more fire troubles?’ When Draco shook his head, Potter had smiled even wider and laid down a finely knitted hat. The colorwork was intricate and though Draco wanted to run his fingers over the warm looking wool, he resisted. ‘I noticed you’re always bundled up, and I washed up on a small island off the coast of Scotland where there’s a little old lady sold me the hat.’ Draco’s head snapped up but the man was already limping back towards the door. Draco had tried to read his latest adventure, but the mission report was classified. For a while he’d wished he’d found the words to ask. Nevertheless, while Draco would have preferred to have ignored the hat, it _was_ very warm and it made Doris in the office across from him glow green with jealousy every time she saw it.

The next time he visited was the first of May and he came just before the half-day was done. Draco had hurriedly stuffed the hat under his leg, but he was too late. Potter came smiling and bearing a stack of reports and flowers. It had turned out to be a hawthorn flower crown. ‘Found them off an old tree in the forest I was chasing one of those new Death Eaters through.’ When Draco wore it to the Beltane fire with his mother, she’d complimented them and Draco had blushed.

In the intervening months, Draco had finally built a little stack of the trinkets Potter brought him in the sixth compartment of his bottom drawer. He’d preserved the all the strange flowers (‘careful with that one, it’ll combust every couple days, nearly took off my ear’), laid out the stone and wooden carvings (‘I heard you had a cold, this little bloke is supposed to bring good health and fertility’), carefully wound and folded the weird pieces of jewelry and clothing (‘keep this one around, it dispels magic cast maliciously’), and various miscellaneous odds and ends (‘the American no-maj children—that is, muggles—wear them on their wrists, it’s so stretchy, and look it’s in the shape of a goat!’). But, he still hadn’t managed to say a word in reply.

Now, almost a year and a half later, Draco’s collection was not only plentiful, it was also no longer really feasible that Draco pretend he didn’t accept (and like) the gifts. He wasn’t sure how to say thank you. That is, he wasn’t sure how he could say thanks in a way that expressed his desire to attach himself in more than the strange relationship they currently had. So when Potter didn’t show up for another month, he began to get antsy. Finally after two months had passed and the gossips had begun to whisper that maybe he was dying, Draco made the decision to seek the twit out.

He tried Ronald Weasley first. This was a mistake. While Draco and Potter had moved on from their adolescent fighting, the ginger very much hadn’t. He sneered, in as much as a desk auror chewing on a doughnut could sneer and asked why Draco was putting his ferrety snout in places it didn’t belong.

Draco turned dramatically, or what would have been dramatically if his wool hat wasn’t topped with a pom-pom, and swept towards the Department of Mysteries.

Granger and Lovegood proved much more fruitful. Granger eyed his hat with a thoughtful smile and then informed him, with a downward tilt to her lips that Potter was in St Mungo’s waiting to be woken from a cursed sleep.

Draco felt the floor tilt beneath his feet a little.

‘Cursed?’

‘Yes, he was trying to protect a baby basilisk from some poachers and got caught between a two different curses.’

 _A baby basilisk?_ ‘Will he be alright?’

Lovegood replied by showing him a parchment covered in little jigging runes and nauseatingly swirling arithmantic equations. ‘We just need a catalyst to make one or the other curses finish.’

A set of derivatives began to line dance, and Draco backed away towards the door. ‘May I see him.’

‘Why?’ Drat Granger and her piercing gaze.

Draco had no good reason really. What could he say? He wanted to demand a trinket from the man? He had become infatuated with the man even though he hadn’t said a word to him since trials? Mostly, Draco thought, it was because he missed the man.

Instead, Draco blurted, ‘He hasn’t turned in his paperwork.’ Then swept out of their office, his exit ruined this time by a combination of his bright red cheeks and his flying pom pom.

He found himself in St. Mungo’s in the long-term ward where Potter had been moved after the first month. He wasn’t sure how he’d talked his way past the medi-wizard at the reception desk, but they had taken his wand and required a magical signature. He stood outside the door and stared at the handle, not sure what he’d find inside.

Finally, he pushed the door open and let himself inside. Potter lay on the bed, on top of the sheets, still in the clothes he had been wearing. The details slowly filtered through Draco’s mind. His clothes were ripped and bloody. There was blood on the sheets, like deep red shadows. His face was pale and drawn, where it wasn’t covered in grime. Also, he was glowing. A deep yellow surrounded him and reflected off the sweat and blood. It made his drained, tanned face look emaciated.

Draco stumbled back into the door. Why had he come here? What had he expected? A strangled breath escaped the man on the bed and Draco felt something sting his eyes. Tears.

He sat at his desk the next day in a haze. Even Doris asked if he was feeling quite all right. When he had wiled the entire day away and it was time to go home, he pulled open the drawer that held all his treasures. The toad had become a worry stone of sorts and so he dug through the expanded space for the shelf he had set it on last. Instead his hand came away with a pendant on a woven reed necklace. It was a rough ball of obviously hand spun cotton wound around something hard in the center. He thought back to Potter’s description of this particular piece. ‘I was doing some research at a Toltec temple and an old woman gave me this in exchange for helping her with some work around her property. Keep this one around, it dispels magic cast maliciously. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. Hermione’s translator doesn’t have a lot of experience with Nahuatl.’

He ran a finger over the cotton and could feel a dark, earthy power radiating from within. Perhaps this was just the catalyst that Lovegood was talking about. Decided, he set off for St. Mungo’s again. When he was standing once more before Potter, he realized that perhaps this had been a hair-brained idea after all. He walked to the side of the bed and placed the necklace next to one of Potter’s clenched hands. Nothing happened. Something inside Draco wilted.

Then the cotton ball detached from the reed circle which was becoming larger—or rather, Draco realized, it was filling in space so that it became a bowl. The bowl fell off the bed and when it came to a stop underneath, there was water in it.

Movement caught Draco’s attention as the cotton ball began to roll around and over Potter’s body. It soaked in the yellow light and as it passed, the blood dried and flaked off, leaving raw new skin behind. The strands began to look less like strands and more like an egg shell. When it had finished, Potter still looked sick, but is a much more fixable way. Draco found himself sitting hard on the ground. Which gave him a perfect view of the egg hurtling down and cracking itself on the bottom of the bowl. The shell dissolved revealing a muddy yolk and sickly yellow egg white. When nothing more happened, Draco leaned back against the wall. ‘Oh Merlin, I’ve killed him.’

He was still leaning against the wall, staring blankly at the darkening sky when the door slammed open. Standing there, wand already raised and casting was Lovegood. A golden ribbon spells out runes above his head while several other spells recorded information in a dizzying swirl of colors and numbers. Lovegood glanced down at him, dreaminess gone. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done, but we will be having words.’

Draco nodded and shifted his attention to Potter who was stirring on the bed. The man coughed and sat up, rubbing his head. He looked up sheepishly at Lovegood. ‘Oh, Luna, hullo. I suppose I’ve really done it this time.’ He looked mournfully at the colors and shapes around him. ‘Is the baby alright? I didn’t even manage get a gift for Draco.’

At this, Draco squeaked. Potter turned, eyes wide. He rubbed his face and then peered harder. ‘ _Draco?_ Merlin’s tits, still unconscious then.’ He turned to Lovegood once again, ‘Since you’re just a figment of my imagination, could you please assure me that Hs’sshkjt is quite alright?’

‘Your snake is quite fine, and you’re not unconscious. Malfoy did something that… well did something.’

‘The necklace’ Draco choked out.

‘Tlalli ilyollo’s amulet!’ He smiled down at Draco, ‘I knew you kept everything, _and_ you still have the hat!’

Draco was unsure as to how to respond. He watched wide-eyed as Potter hauled himself out of bed and down to kneeling in front of Draco. ‘Draco, you are all right, right? I didn’t bugger something up with the translation, did I?’

Draco mutely shook his head. Looking more like a she-demon than the highly competent, multi-field scholar that she was, Lovegood snapped, ‘Harry, please get back into bed! You’ve been soaking in your own lifeblood for the past two months, you need to be checked out before you do anything.’

Harry ignored her and raised a trembling hand to Draco’s face, cupping it with hard calluses and raised scars. ‘I don’t have anything for you this time, so I’ll stop hiding behind gifts.’ He moved closer and kissed Draco’s frozen face on his forehead, then one cheek and then the other. He drew back and smiled.

Then he slumped forward, in a dead faint. Draco instinctively caught the man, eyes wide and arms awkward.

Above them, Luna sighed. ‘Bloody Wrackspurts.’

**Author's Note:**

> Finally watched Kingsman 2 and I couldn't handle JB and Merlin, so here's a fic to unsuccessfully get my mind off them and also get that dang John Denver song out of my head. _Land mines detonate on trigger, they don't wait around for someone to deactivate them!!!??? It's a dud I say!!!!_  
>  Pardon me. In any case, I'd been sitting on the idea and needed an escape back into a familiar fandom.  
> Cheers,  
> Ace


End file.
